Government Shutdown Will Disrupt Student Loans

The federal government’s has an arms length role in education, so the overall impact of a federal shutdown on schools will be limited. One exception, Michele McNeil explains, has to do with student loans:
In addition, the department said today that although most student federal aid programs would not be impacted by a shutdown, colleges and universities would not be able to draw down and disburse to students any campus-based program awards, such as work-study or the Federal Perkins Loan Program. The impact on the $951 million work-study program would affect about 590,000 students in approximately 3,400 participating institutions. Perkins affects about 673,000 students in some 1,600 participating institutions.
A lot of people seem to have a hazy sense that “the government” is something that has nothing to do with their lives, but if House Republicans prove unwilling to back down on some of these policy riders a bunch of folks are about to find out otherwise.

Neat fact: If the federal government were to take all of the money it pours into various forms of financial aid each year, it could go ahead and make tuition free, or close to it, for every student at every public college in the country.

In "Who Is Stoking The Trillion Dollar Student Debt Bubble?," we highlighted the rather disconcerting fact that in 2014, the US government gave out some $16 billion in loans to students attending colleges that graduated fewer than a third of their students after six years.

We have experienced lots of confusion from our customers around how their federal student loan interest rates are determined, and wanted to shed some light on the process to make you more informed about your options.

On the same day Everest College filed for bankruptcy protection following the closure of its 14 Ontario campuses, an Ottawa lawyer says he’s considering a class-action lawsuit against the school and its California-based parent company.
Michael Crystal with Ottawa’s Spiteri and Ursulak law firm said he’s been in contact with several students since the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities suspended the career college’s registration in the province.